Our Favorite Videos from LeWeb Days 1-2

Marguerite Imbert9 December 2011

Ever think of wiring your home? Deb Roy, Co-Founder & CEO of Bluefin Labs did. In a fascinating presentation yesterday, he showed a huge LeWeb audience how he studied his son’s language-acquisition process by wiring his home with cameras and microphones. Three years later, Roy’s developed a quarter of a million hours of home videos, the world’s largest collection of home videos to date. This is the sort of stuff we’re dying to share with you!

With just one day left of LeWeb, it’s time to give you a few of our favorite videos to watch, wherever you are. These are the speakers, panel discussions, and demos that made us google, gasp, and gape in the last two days. From brain wave software to Eric Schmidt – here’s what everyone’s buzzing about. Stay tuned as we add our own video interviews taken outside the plenary room with top game players and guests.

Want to Use Your Mind to Control the iPhysical World?

Interaxon software responds to activity in your brain waves by levitating chairs and making fuzzy ears rise and fall on a digital headband. Applied to cases of ADD or epilepsy, it’s fundamentally impacting psychological behavior studies. You have to check this out. The captivating Canadian (!) founder Ariel Garten brought Geraldine (Le Meur) to the stage to play a game where her alpha and beta levels had direct impact on an idyllic screen before here. If she concentrated at 75% or more, it snowed. If she increased her relaxation state, the birds slowed down. We were amazed!

Phil Libin, Evernote CEO

Phil Libin reminds me of Paul Giamatti. On top of being CEO of Inc Magazine’s newest ‘company of the year,’ Phil Libin is a total foodie. The recently launched Evernote Food app is one of the reasons he’s beaming. Presenting to a packed room at LeWeb yesterday, he doesn’t hesitate to show us a recent meal. “Our goal is to reimagine the essential tools,” he said, “With the wider suite that Evernote offers (including the latest “Evernote Hello,” we’ll extricate ourselves from products like Word and Powerpoint that don’t really take into account the last 30 years.” Evernote serves 20 million users, up from 5 million last year. “The fact that our phones are still organizing our contacts alphabetically is crazy.” Check him out!

Heavy hitter Eric Schmidt brings bold claims

Picture this. The room’s packed with the finest online entrepreneurs and developers from around the world. Eric Schmidt shows up. An audience member asks why leading developers of mobile apps (like Flipboard, Stamped, and Path) are first making their apps for iOS instead of Android. Schmidt goes on the defense, boldly claiming that Android is far ahead of the iPhone. The room drops silent. He clarifies, saying he meant it in terms of price, unit volume, higher number of vendors, and of course, the new Ice Cream Sandwich (which lets us secure our phones through facial recognition). The remainder of the presentation was also full of bold claims, some of which seemed more likely (“The summer of 2012, the majority of televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded.”) Check it out.

Jens Begemann, Wooga co-founder and CEO, Reps Berlin

Jens Begemann, co-founder and CEO of Berlin-based social games developer Wooga, took the stage at LeWeb to showcase the launch the mobile iteration of Diamond Dash (the game award best social game at the European Games Award in August). Wooga–Europe’s largest social games developer and the third largest worldwide– has overcome the problem of needing a sufficient rating to appear on the app store. Existing Diamond Dash players can invite mobile gamers to join and the invitees can then automatically install the game on their mobile device without having to navigate the app store.

Yesterday’s launch in Paris means players in 120 countries – encompassing nine languages – can join the 25 million people who have already played the game on Facebook, making it the most popular arcade game on the social network. The 10 million monthly users will now be augmented by players using iOS to play the 60-second diamond dash on the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Another monster hit could be on the way. For Diamond Dash images, a trailer and to download the game visit: www.wooga.com/diamond-dash-mobile.

Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder/CEO, brings good cheer

There was nothing but love in the air for Airbnb, leader in a new tech economy built around sharing. It’s used in over 19,000 cities and 192 countries. It lets us to stay in cheap flats, castles, igloos, even Conan O’Brien’s stage. Brian Chesky, Airbnb Co-Founder & CEO felt particularly at home in Paris, Airbnb’s 2nd biggest market (to New York), where the average renter makes 5,400 euros a year. His vision demonstrates Rachel Botsman’s theory of collaborative consumption and maintains its commitment to “a community of common people.” “We’re trying to make physical spaces available in the way that Google made information available.” Objective for 2012? Integrating social media so that rent couplets are matched by personality and interests. Watch it!